Fajardo stars in San Miguel's win over Rain or Shine

(MENAFN - Arab News) Todd purves san miguel beer's active assistant coach couldn't have come up with a better way to describe how june mar fajardo played on friday night against rain or shine.

'june mar fajardo looked like what he did not too long ago-a dominant force" purves told reporters minutes after the 6-foot-10 man-mountain manhandled rain or shine's interior defense in a 97-92 pba governors' cup win at the araneta coliseum in cubao.

'i am really proud of the way he played on both ends" continued purves after getting 28 points and 18 rebounds from fajardo who was such a pain in rain or shine's neck that he got two of the elasto painters' top local big men to foul our one after the other in the game's most critical stretch.

the win was the first in two games for the beermen who opened up with a loss to alaska in the inaugurals last sunday.

alaska meanwhile found itself in the same boat as san miguel after absorbing a shock 95-91 loss at the hands of globalport earlier in the night where the other locals of the batang pier finally gave import leroy hickerson and alex cabagnot much needed support.

fajardo and import reggie williams scored all but two of san miguel's 17 points in a crucial breakaway that had the beermen wriggling out of a 76-all game to take a 93-87 lead heading into the final 1:41.

last season's top rookie first got beau belga out on six fouls and made a free throw to shatter that 76-all deadlock with 6:36 left and less than a minute after picked up the last foul of raymond almazan for another pair of charities that made it 81-80.

he completed a three-point play off the last available center of the elasto painters larry rodriguez with 3:54 to go which made it 88-85 before williams a legitimate nba veteran drained a triple that kept the painters at bay 91-87.

williams and fajardo scored 12 points each in the fourth their combined total actually matching the output of the entire rain or shine squad in the fourth period.

williams finished with 29 points 13 rebounds and two steals and was also praised by purves.

'reggie has been wonderful so far as a teammate and as a player" purves said. 'he makes the game easier for his teammates. he has a very high basketball iq and is very unselfish. his teammates understand that too." arizona reid led the painters with 27 points and 18 rebounds and paul lee contributed 13 with chris tiu finishing with 11.

rain or shine is now at the bottom of the standings with its second straight loss and considering how short the elimination round is and with ties for rankings to be broken only via the quotient system the painters would need to win games in a string to get back in contention.

each of the 10 teams will play just a single round elimination with the top four teams to earn twice-to-beat privileges against the next four. the bottom two will get the boot.

the batang pier-one of two teams that got eliminated in the last conference-kept themselves out of the bottom half with the first upset of the tournament against the aces.

hickerson scored 25 points and cabagnot 24 and coach pido jarencio got two other locals to scored in twin digits for a change as the batang pier dealt alaska its first loss also in two games.

globalport led by as large as 14 points as terrence romeo came back from an injury to toss in 18. jay washington shot 13 points.

import henry walker scored 22 for the aces who got just two points from sonny thoss the hero in their win over the beermen last sunday.

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